From 2014 through 2020, St. Louis had the highest homicide rate in the country among cities with 250,000 people or more. St. Louis Public Radio and APM Reports spent nearly 2½ years fighting to access public information about the police department’s efforts to solve these killings. Here are five takeaways from our reporting.
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department detectives solved fewer than half of the nearly 2,000 homicides in the city over the past decade
For most of the decade, police struggled to bring perpetrators to justice. A review of data and records reveals some of the reasons police failed to solve so many cases, including shoddy detective work, lack of resources and eroding community trust.
But things have begun to improve. In 2022 and 2023, homicides decreased, and the department solved 56% of the murders committed in those years, its highest rate since 2013, according to the analysis.
The department did not make anyone available to discuss these findings and did not respond to written requests for comment.
There is a racial disparity in the cases that detectives solve
Between 2014 and 2023, police solved fewer than half of the cases involving Black homicide victims but solved two-thirds of cases involving white victims.
Police officials say a lack of witness cooperation makes it harder to solve homicides. In neighborhoods with frequent murders and few arrests, cooperating with police can lead to deadly retaliation.
Meanwhile, Black community leaders say many residents don’t trust officers after years of targeted policing in Black neighborhoods and numerous instances of excessive force used against Black people.
Several detectives were accused of failing to take basic investigative steps critical to solving cases
According to memos written by a former homicide supervisor and provided to St. Louis Public Radio, some detectives did not look for key evidence, follow up on tips or keep in touch with the families of victims. Department higher-ups kept some officers in the unit after receiving those internal complaints about investigative failures.
One detective was transferred into the homicide unit in 2019 despite a history that included brutality lawsuits, questions about his credibility and suspicion of substance abuse.
Staffing shortages and a DNA backlog hampered the department’s efforts to solve homicides
Massive overtime, turnover in key positions, an exodus of crime lab technicians and a ballooning backlog of DNA samples linked to homicides all hindered investigations as the homicide rate hit record highs.
In 2023, the average turnaround time for DNA samples — which can be critical to solving cases — was 15 months, according to department records.
The department has withheld information about homicides from the public and keeps inconsistent records
The City of St. Louis spent nearly 2½ years fighting to keep information about homicide clearances secret — even though the department had provided the same data from previous years to The Washington Post. Officials released the records last summer as part of a legal settlement after journalists sued the city.
The department also would not provide a current roster of homicide detectives or share how many detectives are in the homicide unit.
Researchers have raised questions about the transparency around the department’s public data. St. Louis University professor Ness Sandoval, for example, attempted to build a monthly crime database for each of the city’s 79 neighborhoods but could not get the month-by-month homicide numbers to add up to the department’s published yearly totals.
The St. Louis police declined to discuss discrepancies in their data. But Police Chief Robert Tracy touched briefly on the subject in January at a public safety briefing with the mayor and other officials.
“I'm a big believer in auditing those numbers, because I am all about statistics and the integrity of the statistics,” he said, “so if he’s found differences, let’s find out what they are. Let’s talk to him about that.”
Sandoval said he has met with an assistant to Tracy to discuss concerns with the data but not the chief himself.
This is the seventh story in "Unsolved," a multi-part investigation exploring how police in St. Louis have struggled to solve killings, leaving thousands of family members without answers.
This article was published as a collaboration between St. Louis Public Radio, The Marshall Project and APM Reports, as part of the Public Media Accountability Initiative, which supports investigative reporting at local media outlets around the country.
